This is a clear failure

Leadership failure, intelligence failure, and a military failure are all wrapped into one problem:

Democrats' cowardice on full display

Let's Go Brandon's withdrawal from the race for president was about as messy as his withdrawal from Afghanistan. He withdrew on social media, on a Sunday, like a coward; much like he withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving turmoil in his wake. It's also reminiscent of how Hillary 'election denier' Clinton supposedly conceded the 2016 election to Trump, not facing up to it in person, but via proxies.   Why do Democrats take their defeats like cowards? Because they are cowards.

Hillary Clinton was literally roped off from reporters in 2016. Debbie Wasserman Schultz rigged the primaries for Hillary Clinton that same election cycle. Donna Brazile fed the debate questions from CNN to Hillary Clinton. 

Democrats refused to have a fair primary process while many Democrat voters wanted to replace Let's Go Brandon, the party elite made sure it was not possible. They ran RFK Jr. out of the party because of it; he tried to run as a Democrat and was blocked at every turn.  They hid the truth going all the way back to 2020 when they kept Let's Go Brandon hidden in the basement during the election campaign.  They knew he would screw it up. So they hid him. They hid him as much as possible, right up to his disastrous 2024 debate debacle. Their cowardice and deceit combined to cause their party to not have a nominee just over 100 days before the presidential election.

Cowardice leads to chaos. In the end, what they tried harder and harder to hide eventually burst the dam, and voting Democrats were blindsided after believing the lies they were being fed for years.  The Democrat party are reaping what they and their complicit media have sewn for decades. Cowardice has been covered by lies and deceit and America is finally, slowly waking up to it.

Cowardice is not leadership. If you want to see what real leadership looks like, here it is:

Leadership is courage, combined with vision.  Make America Great Again is a vision, not just a slogan. America was once great but has slipped into mediocrity; all thanks to largely Democratic political hegemony at all levels of power for many decades, combined with their self-serving cowardice.

Cowardice has existed in the Democrat party for a long, long time; it's not new. It's a party of self-serving and defensive elitists. They want to ensure their own wealth and power and statist jobs while pretending to be for the people. 

The past is prologue, it's said.  And in this case, it's entirely true.  Any Democrat who now decides to run for president but refused to do so during the primary season, is fully a coward. Why wouldn't they have tried during the primaries? They felt safe enough with Let's Go Brandon to ride out the 2024 election. That has been blown up.

Any Democrat who now steps up for the sake of the country, to "save democracy" is a lying sack of Canadian immigrant poop. They are going to step up now for a chance to serve themselves now that it's safe for them to do so. They risk nothing at this point, and that is what cowards do. Take for example Joe Manchin of West Virginia.  He left the party for self-serving reasons, not to rescue the country.  How do we know that?  As recently as today he was considering running for president as the Democrat nominee. Self-serving.  He bowed out almost as quickly as he expressed interest.  That's likely because he was told by the self-serving and cowardly party elite his bid would be stifled by them.  They have likely already decided upon their desired outcome. 

Donald Trump on the other hand has been nothing but courageous, going back to 2015, running for president in the face of withering (though unwarranted) ridicule, not only was he courageous, he overcame. That is courage, it is triumph and it is real leadership. It's obvious why he does not fear whomever the Democrats decide to prop up in Let's Go Brandon's place.  He's a true leader, not encumbered by fear.

As an aside, have you ever noticed that the name Trump is within the word triumph? I just noticed that.

As an American, you need to ask yourself, "do I want my country led by courageous leadership that will deliver triumph, or do you want to see inevitable decline caused by self-serving cowardice?"  If you are truly an American, you already know the answer.

Republican leader gets banned for calling out threats

Republican senate majority leader Mitch McConnell pointed out the threats to him.  But it gets worse. Twitter leaves Leftist calls for "Eradication".

Wow.

Democrats are political opportunists, not leaders

Democrats have changed their tune on immigration as the situation warrants. They'll say they're nuanced.  They'll say they've evolved on the issue.  Call it what they will, it's nothing more than political opportunism. 

It's nothing more than P.T. Barnum politics - taking advantage of the gullibility of suckers.  That's the situation, what they perceive as a gullible electorate, and a chance to pick up votes.

It's not about compassion, it's about nothing more than getting, and keeping power.

This is the same playbook as they followed for climate change.  What they are doing is following the winds of change by trying to win votes based on the prevailing wind. It's not consistent and it's not leadership, in fact it's the  opposite.  Give them credit for political shrewdness, it's worked for decades, even though it's finally falling apart now.  Leadership is different than political shrewdness.  Leadership is seeing what the country needs, and driving towards it.  That is what president Trump is doing.  I have not seen the same sort of visionary leadership in my lifetime except for Ronald Reagan, who faced different issues, but tackled them in the same way as president Trump - he applied 'unpopular' but common sense solutions that worked in the end.

Kudos to president Trump for showing leadership on this issue; it's about fixing broken regulation and the rule of law, nothing less. He sees the bigger picture and immigration is just one piece of the puzzle.

John McCain, fall guy

I'm not much of a fan of Glenn Beck.  But this opinion makes sense given the deafening silence of GOP Senate leadership in response to his vote.

Politics -- it's all cyclical

Cycles.  The Bible covered this subject over a millennium ago in Ecclesiastes. Whether you are Christian or not, this truism applies:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

The verses continue to cover other things for which there are different seasons.  The point is universal; everything, absolutely everything is cyclical.  There are  ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys in absolutely everything from global warming to the economy, to bull markets and bear markets to politics and human behavior.

The length of the cycles are not always consistent from category to category or even within a specific category.  For example economic growth periods typically last much longer than recessions (unequal cycles) but during the Great Depression there was an inconsistently long down cycle.

This idea is important to keep in mind during turbulent times such as these. As the Persian saying goes, "this too shall pass".  The reason this struck me today is because of Peggy Noonan's column today in the Wall Street Journal where she laments the decline of lucid, eloquent discourse in American politics.

Have you had your 2016 Moment? I think you probably have, or will.

The Moment is that sliver of time in which you fully realize something epochal is happening in politics, that there has never been a presidential year like 2016, and suddenly you are aware of it in a new, true and personal way. It tends to involve a poignant sense of dislocation, a knowledge that our politics have changed and won’t be going back.

We’ve had a lot to absorb—the breaking of a party, the rise of an outlandish outsider; a lurch to the left in the other party, the popular rise of a socialist. Alongside that, the enduring power of a candidate even her most ardent supporters accept as corrupt. Add the lowering of standards, the feeling of no options, the coarsening, and all the new estrangements.

...A friend I’ll call Bill, a political veteran from the 1980s and ’90s, also had his Moment with his child, a 14-year-old daughter who is a budding history buff. He had never taken her to the Reagan Library, so last month they went. As she stood watching a video of Reagan speaking, he thought of Reagan and FDR, of JFK and Martin Luther King. His daughter, he realized, would probably never see political leaders of such stature and grace, though she deserved to. Her first, indelible political memories were of lower, grubbier folk. “Leaders with Reaganesque potential no longer go into politics—and why would they, with all the posturing and plasticity that it requires?”

She provided an even more low bar example in the piece.  This too shall pass.  Noonan should know better, she's older and undoubtedly possesses far more political insight than I do. Politics in America has not always been eloquent or refined.  It's fluid.  What we witnessed during the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher or Churchill or the Founding Fathers is more likely the shorter cycle. But the pendulum can only swing towards the guttural for so long before it swings back or the pendulum actually breaks.  

America can only decline for so long before it snaps back or collapses like ancient Rome or Greece. But even such a calamity would not be the end of the ideals that made America great, just as the collapse of the U.S.S.R. did not ensure that communism ended up in the 'dustbin of history' for all time, the ideals of liberty and justice for all shall not perish if America does.  They might ebb, but they will eventually flow once again.  But prior to such a catastrophe of an American implosion, politics will surely snap back from the brink of Idiocracy and allow for an American mending.  Just as Obama won in 2008 and 2012, he was severely rebuked in 2010 and 2014 by voters.  And just as Trump and Clinton might embody the negatives Noonan concerns herself with, neither will be relevant in 8 or 9 years at most.

Legalizing marijuana, lowering educational standards, outsourcing jobs, encroaching government restricting liberty, yes we must make our voices known and fight for what we believe is correct or America might not snap back, just as Rome eventually did not recover from it's own flawed choices. But the ideals that created America will remain in hearts and minds, and will someday, somewhere once again flourish in a significant way.

While Noonan conflates Trump as the solution with Trump as the problem, she is not all wrong in her observations;

My Moment came a month ago. I’d recently told a friend my emotions felt too close to the surface—for months history had been going through me and I felt like a vibrating fork. I had not been laughing at the splintering of a great political party but mourning it. Something of me had gone into it. Party elites seemed to have no idea why it was shattering, which meant they wouldn’t be able to repair it, whatever happens with Mr. Trump.

I was offended that those curiously quick to write essays about who broke the party were usually those who’d backed the policies that broke it. Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be paid to express them and there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering—some of them making mistakes, some unlucky—you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this great project, and they are in trouble.

Quite true. But dark despair at politics or the GOP or in anything, is not only unhelpful, it's wrong: To everything there is a season.

Want gutsy leadership? Look to Canada.

It's called backbone. Try it some time.

Vice president Biden has traveled to Poland to show support for Ukrainian sovereignty on the part of the United States.  Perhaps more aptly, he's trying to quell U.S. allies' fears since president Obama infamously cancelled the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe years ago to calm Russian nerves.  Actually, it has bolstered Russian nerves.  Putin has no fear of Obama or the United States because he sees only weakness.  Good job Neville Chamberlain.

Just what is leadership anyway?

What is a good leader? A leader isn't someone who does the work. A leader is someone who inspires people, or a team, to do it themselves. A leader inspires people to put forth their best efforts. He (or she) brings out their best. A leader also leads by example. A leader has a vision that drives a team in a direction, it does not drag people towards that vision kicking and screaming.

What a leader isn't, is someone who convinces people that they have peaked. An Olympic athlete's coach doesn't tell the athlete to shoot for 5th, or that they can't possibly get any better. He pushes the athlete to go for the gold. The coach, the leader, understands that in every person there is the potential for greatness that is there to be tapped.

Tea Party Leadership Lesson from Dancing Guy

You may have seen this before.  There's a lesson it it whether you have or haven't seen it, that is worth considering.

Are you a Tea Party supporter at heart but afraid to take some specific action for fear of standing out (say among your neighbors or colleagues or friends)?  Here's something the Occupy Wall Street crowd probably understands better than mainstream America, and certainly more than many silent Tea Party supporters - stepping up matters.

This video on leadership clearly explains why. Please watch it and see what happens.

That's how you make a difference.  You don't even need to be the first one out there.  You just need to be willing to take the risk.

The Obama oil spill speech - what did we learn?

Last night's speech by President Obama on the oil spill was pretty much what I had predicted it would be. Act tough, blame BP, focus on the money first because they don't have a solution to the real problem of oil continuing to pour into the Gulf of Mexico.  But the President's speech showed us a great deal more than just a sorry excuse for an oil spill response.

Obama, 3 a.m. and the long walk from leadership

Is it just me, or will the President's switch from seeming nonchalance on the oil spill to one of potential face-time overkill something that isn't likely going to help his popularity too much?  He's dug himself a hole and there is no easy climb out of it here.

Quote checks

Below are related issue quotes from Karl Marx, Barack Obama and Groucho Marx. Out of the three, I think you can guess whom I'd like to see as President of the United States.

Politics

• Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
• I think when you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody. Barack Obama
• Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

Religion/Fate

• Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. Karl Marx
• It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. Barack Obama
• Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. Groucho Marx

Mob Rule and Leadership

• Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite! Karl Marx
• My administration is the only thing between you [CEO's] and the pitchforks. Barack Obama
• The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Groucho Marx

Wealth and Happiness

• The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property. Karl Marx
• Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential. Barack Obama
• I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. Groucho Marx

There doesn't seem to be enough difference between the first two choices, and the last choice seems to have more common sense in each case.